


Lesson the Second

by orphan_account



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, First Meetings, Lesbian Character(s), Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: By the time she’d finished her answer to‘What are your thoughts on last week’s episode of General Hospital? Respond fully in the box below’, the box filling up the rest of the sheet, Foreman was beginning to think she’d made a mistake.House not-so-accidentally hires an entire team of women. This might be the weirdest interview process Foreman and Cameron have ever had.(Gender-flipped canon AU, set pre-series.)
Relationships: Allison Cameron/Eric Foreman
Kudos: 6





	Lesson the Second

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own anything.

Until she got to the lesbian question, Foreman was pretty sure the paperwork she was filling out was a test. 

The man she was applying to work for — Dr. House — was the kind of person that had words thrown about him like ‘spirited _’_ and, at the other side of the politeness spectrum, ‘completely goddamn insane’. It seemed to her like the idea of mentally testing his new fellows through a nightmare of questions would come easily to someone like that.

It also looked like he had written out the questions she was answering himself; some of them seemed to fit that brief of crazy perfectly. Number nineteen had been ‘ _Are you at all opposed to tracking down a snake and wrestling it yourself to get anti-venom?’_ and Foreman had looped ‘no’; she had hoped whilst doing so that it was some sort of psychological question that was asking about something like courage instead of an explicit wanting of permission. 

By the time she’d finished her answer to ‘ _What are your thoughts on last week’s episode of General Hospital? Respond fully in box below’,_ the box filling up the rest of the sheet, Foreman was beginning to think she’d made a mistake. She had a good job in LA — a good working relationship with Dr. Hamilton, her mentor, too — and she didn’t have to move this far out to be challenged. 

It boiled down to being one hell of an opportunity. And Foreman _really_ wanted it, now she’d beaten out other people for the job.

Not everyone, though. There was another woman sitting next to her in the hallway, filling out the same questionnaire. 

Foreman had found her eyes flickering over to her between questions. She had steady hands, soft-looking, yet still; her nails were bare of any varnish and clipped short, like her own. Her hair was a dark brown that, Foreman could assume, without looking up, was tied back — at least partly — because locks of it fell forward, as if escaping from an elastic. 

The woman sighed every other question. Most of her answers were written with a little bit too much pressure. It looked like Foreman wasn’t alone with how she felt.

Foreman wondered how she looked to this stranger. She wondered that a lot, to be honest — what strangers thought of her. Really thought of her. A charity case? Diversity hire? Competition? It was different with women compared to men — especially when said men clocked that she wasn’t all that interested in them, most of the time.

The scratch of the biro pen opposite abruptly stopped. “Are you kidding me?”

Foreman huffed. “Question thirty-two?”

“I’m guessing this one got you too,” the woman said. She shook her head in disbelief. The loose hair bobbed with the action. “I mean, it’s personal. This is basically harassment in the workplace,” she said. “It’s not right.”

Foreman raised her head properly, feeling the gaze of the woman’s eyes on the nape of her neck. 

“I’m pretty sure we’d have to be hired first,” she said, taking in the stranger’s face. She wore an open, angry expression — genuinely pissed-off, though Foreman knew just as well that it could be about the act of asking rather than anything remotely to do with, well, lesbianism. “It’s not that bad.”

The other woman looked back at the sheet. 

“‘ _Do you engage, or have you ever engaged, in sexual or romantic relationships with another person of the same sex?’”_ she read out loud, disbelievingly. “ _32-A: If yes, how much would you object to your boss using this to fuel jokes about your sexuality in comparison to topics like your ethnicity, cultural background, gender, mental health, et cetera?’”_

“Okay, it is pretty bad,” Foreman amended. She gestured to the door. They were sitting outside of Dr. House’s office. Through the glass, they both could see him engaging with a woman she assumed to be Dr. Cuddy, the hospital administrator. “What are we going to do, though? Walk out? Go in there? Working with Greg House…”

“Chance of a lifetime, I know,” the woman said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t give him a piece of my mind. In fact —” she stood up, then looked back at Foreman. “Are you coming with?”

“What, as the ‘angry black woman’?” Foreman shook her head. “Count me out.”

The other woman faltered. “I didn’t mean,” she said, before stopping herself. “I’m sorry. Dr. Cameron — Allison Cameron.” She stuck out a hand. “Immunologist.”

“Neurologist,” Foreman replied, eyebrows furrowing. Two very different specialisations — and, with _both_ different to Dr. House’s own, she was beginning to wonder what he was planning to do once he’d hired one of them. “Dr. Kelly Foreman.” She shook her hand; it was soft, just like she’d thought. “What were you planning to do in there, anyway?”

The door banged open in lieu of a response. Dr. Cuddy eyed both of them, sighed, and waved them through. 

“He’s waiting for you,” she said, grimly, before leaving with a belated _good luck_ thrown over her shoulder _._ She was gone from the corridor before either of them could ask what for.

A throat cleared in the office. Dr. House was staring at them through the open door with an eyebrow raised. He was using his desk as a leg rest. 

“Didn’t you hear?” he asked, “I’m waiting _._ Move closer and sit so I don’t have to squint. I don’t want to get any wrinkles on my perfect baby skin.” He patted his cheeks for effect. “I suppose I could ask one of the plastic surgeons here to help out, but, gee-golly, I’m just not that kind of girl.”

Foreman sat down, just able to keep from rolling her eyes. Cameron, indignant, remained standing. 

“This,” she said, putting the application from in front of him, “is unacceptable. It’s nothing you need to know.”

“Au contraire,” House said, picking up the piece of paper and scanning it to see what, exactly, she was talking about. “Every question on here has been hand-picked. It tells me everything I need to know about you. For example, _Cameron_ ,” he said, sounding out each syllable of her name as he read it from the top of the sheet, “ _you_ are a ‘defender of the people’. You see the little fights, the little people, and you delude yourself into feeling for them so you can get the job done. Am I right so far?”

Cameron spluttered. “That is —”

“And _you_ ,” House said, using a cane, his cane, probably, judging by the flame stickers, to jab Foreman, “think I’m an ass, but you really want this job so you’re not going to say anything about it. Whatever happened to gals sticking together?” He shook his head, apparently disappointed. “And you like to think you’re nice, or, at least, you’re trying to be nice, which just comes off as a load of old bullshit. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder the size of Manhattan — well, newsflash, you’re in Jersey now. But, hey,” he wiggled the cane at her chest, “at least you’ve got a nice rack.”

A beat, and then —

“What, nothing?” House said, before she could say more. “Cameron there got all huffy.”

“You’re an ass,” Foreman said, finally, batting off the cane and fixing him with a look. “And I didn’t speak before you said that I was from New York, so you didn’t figure all that out just by looking at me. You looked me up. Cameron too, probably.”

House nodded. 

“Lesson the first,” he said, swinging his legs off of the table. “You don’t have to talk to someone to get to know them. Instead, you can hire people to do it for you. Which is what I’m doing now.” He opened a drawer and took two manila files out. “One of these is a patient history for the department’s current case. The other is my schedule for clinic hours. I put it in a folder to make it look prettier. Left or right?”

“Hang on,” Cameron said, “you haven’t said which one of us has gotten the job yet. Which one of us are you talking to?”

“Foreman, obviously,” House said. “I’m kidding. You both get the job. I don’t know either of you well enough to play favourites yet.” He clicked his fingers. “I need your application too, Foreman. I want to see your answer about the snake venom.”

Foreman looked at the questionnaire she was holding. She’d forgotten about it, to be honest. 

“Right,” she said. “If we’re still talking about the folders.”

“Well, if we were talking about how ‘right’ I am all the time, I would be suspicious,” House said, “seeing as though you’ve never seen me in action. Flattered, but suspicious.” He snatched the application out of her hand and gave the right folder to Cameron instead. “Oops, clumsy. Looks like you get lefty instead, Foreman.” 

“There was only one position open,” Cameron stated, stuck on the topic, her hands hovering over the file on her lap. “You said, on the phone, that you only had one position. You’re giving us both the job?”

“Second lesson,” House said, “everybody lies. Plus, I told Chase I’d make sure we’d both be able to ogle the new fellows. Don’t you want to work with Foreman?”

“I don’t think you understand,” said Cameron, breathing out, “how much I need to know if I have this job. I’m sleeping on my friend’s — it doesn’t matter,” she said, quickly, abandoning her point. “Is it a joke, because you’ve been joking since we walked in, or is it the truth?”

Foreman knew, though — she’d been there. She’d been a teenager, but she wagered that it was just as terrifying as an adult, going from couch to couch and not knowing when the cycle would be broken. Not having control — putting your life in the hands of complete strangers after losing trust in the people you know. It was a real fear.

From the look on his face, House understood too. 

“I’m hiring you as my fellow,” he said, simply. “You have a job. I’m not giving you an advance, but you should look at the corkboard in the breakroom for a roommate. Your new odd hours'll turn regular Craigslist off. Now open your _file_ , Cameron. I already did my good deed for the day by showing up. If you look at me like that for much longer, I’m going to get a moral hernia.” 

With that last remark, he left the room. His sudden departure plunged the room into silence. House was an ass, Foreman thought, but he made sure his presence was a marked one. His absence had silenced any previous potential conversation.

Following Cameron’s example, Foreman flipped open her folder. 

There it was, in all of its glory — a patient history. A name, an age, symptoms, allergies, all in words that leapt from the page in a barely-legible doctor’s scrawl. 

Jackpot. 

There was a line at the bottom of the page — a swirling signature, a name printed in block letters next to it: _Dr. Kylie Chase, MD._ House’s other fellow. The one that he’d hired two women to ‘ogle’ at for, in his own words. 

Kylie wasn’t exactly a man’s name, Foreman thought.

The telltale black dots and scratches from a photocopier gave her pause as she scanned the document. “Cameron, you don’t happen to have a history as well, do you?”

“Yeah,” Cameron replied, at length. “I’m thinking he lied to us about the client hours,” she said. “Or that said client hours are going to come later. He did say that everyone lied. You wonder why that was the second lesson and not the first.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever figure that out,” Foreman deadpanned, “but I’m going to bank it on House making it up as he goes along. I only just met him, but — y’know, feels like something he would do.”

Cameron laughed, short and musical. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

“Looks like it,” Foreman said. She stood, holding out a hand. 

Cameron’s fingers slipped into hers as she rose.

“Let’s go,” she said. She was a bit shorter than Foreman, at full height — even factoring in that she was wearing kitten heels and Foreman wasn’t — and the way she brushed her bangs out of her face with her free hand made her seem even more so. Still, those green eyes — there was real steel in them, the kind that pierced, the kind that flint struck against to make a steady burn. 

“I’m moving down from Los Angeles,” Foreman said, still holding Cameron’s hand. “I’ve got my eye on an apartment, but it’s got another room and I don’t want to share it with someone I don’t know. If you want.”

“We’ve only just met,” Cameron said, “and you want me to move in with you. You’re not going to buy me dinner first?”

“Depends on what your answer to question thirty-two was,” Foreman said, surprising herself with how bold she was being. She cracked a smile. “That was terrible, wasn’t it?”

“I can’t pay the first month,” Cameron admitted. “Next month, though.”

“Deal,” said Foreman. She squeezed her hand once, and then she let go. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
